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A few years ago I bought this painting from Japan. Mounting and paper are very worn. I like the expression of serene kindness of this old man, and the contrast, of color and mass, between the red bottle and cup with figure gray's drapped. Also the extensive calligraphy seems to me very beautiful. Unfortunately I can not understand the meaning. I would be really grateful for the help of some expert, even for signing up. Many thanks in advance.
Andrea

I'm glad you enjoy this picture, but it's hard to tell much from your photographs. Can you take clear and overlapping photos of the inscription from top to bottom? Those you have posted here are partial and don't seem to read directly from one to the next.

From the signature and second seal the artist seems to be calling himself 北櫵道人, which on Google returns a landscape painting with a similar signature that looks Chinese and which one commentator without offering evidence dated to the Republican era (1911-1949). (http://bbs.artron.net/thread-815075-1-1.html) I agree though that the brushwork and style and mounting of yours seems Japanese instead. There seems to be a cyclical date 戌子 within your inscription that corresponds to 1948 if my assumption that this is a 20th century picture is correct. Whether that is the date this picture was painted is not clear, as the date is located in the middle of the inscription, which is atypical.

I saw Botan post recently, who may have more insight into this painting at first glance than I do.

Many thanks, Rat. About calligraphy, a friend from Japan wrote me this: "Poem of Lu You (1125-1210), prominent poet of China's Southern Song Dynasty. The writer is expressing a thought of staying away from fame, world liness, just stay at A quiet, peaceful place to live a life, and the second and third sentence are both a desirable and a fresh flowering flower,some little spring water, and make tea with bonfire". Also, looking at many pictures, I observed a similarity between the signature on the painting and the signature of Tomioka Tessai (see attached photo). But the style is not that of the great Japanese master. And the seals are different. But these similarities intrigued me. I am grateful for your attention. My greetings, Andrea

thanks for sharing that, your friend is quite right, the inscription is a transcription of the poem, which seems to be the third in a group of four poems called "Autumn Thoughts" 秋思. The text is below but I dont' see an English translation anywhere easily (there's a similar poem online it's not this one; Lu composed some 10,000 poems):

身似龐翁不出家，一窗自了淡生涯。
山姜零落初成子，石竹淒涼半吐花。
寒澗挹泉供試墨，墮巢篝火喚煎茶。
掩關本意君知否？
兩耳衰年不耐嘩。

Following the poem are three smaller characters that mean: "By Lu You", though the name used for Lu here is his nickname, 放翁.

What I misread as the cyclical date 戌子 is instead 成子, which appears in the poem's second line, so ignore all mention of 1948.

Also, despite the similarity you noticed, I think we can put aside any connection with Tessai.

None of which gets us any closer to identifying who painted your picture!

The only new information I can see is in the clearer image of the first artist's seal, which seems to read 不考洞x (meaning that I don't know the final character and am not confident I have the right reading for the second one either). Hopefully others will have some better insights

Many thanks for your collaboration. The important thing is that the painting likes me! I will look for information on the Chinese poet.In my city lives an important Eastern community and the public library has a good bilingual section and several cultural mediators. Best regards,
Andrea

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